Update on several fronts:
1. Great talk with All Hands Volunteers! Always an amazing group. Will be working with them (and others) in February in Houston area. (are you coming with us??) Others include The Jesse Tree, Inc. and the Bread of Life Ministries in Houston.
2. Booked tickets for a very small scouting/work trip over fall break to Houston. For this big of trip we decided we needed to have an idea of jobs etc.
3. Thanks to Yvonne Gehrmann for refilling the WarmSnugglyBlanket display in the SBU Chapel.
4. Please keep Chad (a family friend and WarmSnugglyBlanket recipient) in your prayers. He is such a great guy and is fighting hard, but the cancer is an awful foe. What a terrible disease.
5. We had a small hurricane relief trip planning meeting this afternoon, assuming volunteers pay their own way, the cost (tools, lumber, supplies, and ground transport, food, will be about $160-$180 per person. We need to raise that much (working estimate will be 150-175 people, so about $32,000. Which seems pretty daunting right now. As an aside: flights are looking MUCH better than busses.
6. If anyone has any great suggestions on how we can help USVI and Puerto Rico we are all ears.
7. We are going to help with Urban Biosphere - "Olean NY startup project" that will begin in the Portville schools, but we hope grows to much much more locally and in Haiti/Liberia.
8. Our Pen pal program is still looking for more people! if you have the time to send a couple emails a month, please fill out https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeh6fEEcibuuknva0N4-0mOGF8UZ-r2WoupYE9K83rFZeSJUw/viewform?usp=sf_link
9. Via PositiveRipples we sent enough money to pay for 13 of the 53 Liberian "Ebola" orphans. We then had two donors step forward and they are paying for 7 more. So we are now at 20.
10. We have had many requests to "do something" for Puerto Rico or the USVI. I would love to. BUT I just do not know what we can do that would help at the present moment.
We also had a request for help in Florida, but I think we are spread too thin.
11. We are going to be looking for people to help tutor (online, in English, math, and Economics--to start. Working in Haiti, Liberia, and we hope refugees in the Middle East (stay tuned).
12. This weekend: ramp job (and we are short our most valuable volunteer (Jen) as she had prior commitments, so we do need more hands! 10:45 Saturday, 11:30 Sunday. Meet at the BR trailer (lower parking lot by baseball field.)
13. Are you alumni of a past BR or Enactus/SIFE trip? Plan a reunion trip with us for Spring Break. (yes you can take a week off work)
